The Otay Mesa
The Otay Mesa was the last the six oilmen saw of the United States. The navy-blue van pulled into a low-slung warehouse. The oilmen were ushered downstairs and instructed to walk through a tunnel. The fluorescent tubes flickered in a maniacal rhythm. The whir of the...
Cathedral City, California
Cathedral City, California glanced up at the purple face of the San Jacinto Mountains and liked what it saw. The six oilmen looked hopefully out the windows of the navy-blue van but noticed nothing either promising or recognizable. They could tell they were heading...
Borrego Springs, California
Borrego Springs, California sashayed into the home stretch of marinating a fifty-pound batch of al pastor. When the dark navy-blue van passed the road into their resort, one of the oilmen told the driver he had missed the turn. The driver said nothing. The six oilmen...
Dulzura, California
Dulzura, California sang along with Sam Cooke as if the angels had never left town. Two men in dark suits emerged from the navy-blue van. They approached the six golfers and invited them to get in for a ride back to the resort. The golfers were happy to be on their...
White River City, Colorado
White River City, Colorado listened with the attentiveness of a demure piano tuner. “It’s ridiculous,” said Caroline. “Fine, I suppose, if you want to draw attention to a cause and stir up a bunch of ill will. But these people with Just Stop Oil who protest by taking...
Ocotillo, California
Ocotillo, California roasted beneath a harsh white sky striped with terror. A hundred miles to the west, where ocean breezes pressed up against the slopes of the coastal range, it was cooler. After the five men on the patio overlooking the eighteenth green finished...
Malone, Utah
Malone, Utah couldn’t have been culpable. The mountain lions were out of town when it all went down. “Here’s the data,” Caroline told them. “In 2022, oil and gas companies spent $124 million lobbying the federal government. “As a number, it’s meaningless, just a bore...
Paisley, Oregon
Paisley, Oregon kept sending teenage brides off to Reno. They played video poker and amassed small fortunes while their worthless husbands drank putrid porter. They were resourceful young women, endowed with common sense and perseverance. They knew a bet with...
Malta, Montana
Malta, Montana knew it was just a matter of time before another batch of slick outsiders showed up. You could mark it on the calendar. They’d fly up from Dallas into the Bozeman-Yellowstone International Airport. During the flight, they stared down at BLM land with...
Middleton, Idaho
Middleton, Idaho might not have been full of Rhodes Scholars. But it knew a thing or two about greed. They all knew what the oil companies were up to, setting off thousands of explosions a mile down, busting up slabs of shale and spiraling poisons through the land....
Lawen, Oregon
Lawen, Oregon, along with other Oregon towns like Buchanan, looked back to a time when people didn’t know what to make of darkness. It hadn’t been all that long ago. Simply because it was unknown, darkness was threatening. It could be nothing else. Only when...
Crane, Oregon
Crane, Oregon sized up its reasons for cautious optimism. They struck her as a hedged bet. If optimism was cautious, it probably couldn’t withstand much of a challenge. She was swept along on floodwaters of discontent and carried through dim light into a room of...
Eaton, Idaho
Eaton, Idaho heard the news secondhand. It came from sly side of the mouth voices. They were the shrill voices of the lobbyist, fine-tuned to dismantle and discredit. They were handsomely paid to drown out the horrors of massive hydraulic fracking. Those patriotic,...
Diamond, Oregon
Diamond, Oregon sat up straight and paid attention. Maybe it was too late. But a few stubborn voices convinced the rest there was still time. The lobbyists for the oil companies could still be neutered. The politicians who took their contributions could still be...
Capulin, New Mexico
Capulin, New Mexico knew a thing or two about deceit. Not that it was a deceitful place. Maybe it looked too innocent, all that purity hung over the town like an unblemished sky. It often seemed as if the town went about its business against an intricate Hollywood...
Elk Springs, Colorado
Elk Springs, Colorado isn’t far from the headwaters of Twelve Mile Gulch. The gulch drains north toward the Yampa River, which runs more or less undisturbed by dams or diversions for 250 miles through northwestern Colorado. John C. Frémont explored the river in 1843. ...
Melstone, Montana
Melstone, Montana didn’t need a scientist to confirm summers lasted longer and stayed hotter. Nobody in town needed to read supporting documents for the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. All they needed was cheaper solar panels and wind turbines. Cheaper...
The Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory
The Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory fascinated her. Dorothy read about their research on conifer seedlings and how they grow back after a forest fire. The scientists found that seedlings of Lodgepole Pine, Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir have historically been able...
